The confession of love is something I find uniquely valued in anime. It’s not that it doesn’t exist in other media – it is the staple conclusion of most romance stories (particularly comedies). I do think that in anime it’s taken on a life of its own, subject of many dramatic, humorous, and both at the same time moments in a show.

I was going to save this post for next year’s Valentine’s Day (like I how I wrote the Whisper of the Heart post sometime in July 2011) but screw it (LOL the Wayans may be right and no one will be left to read it in 2013). I’m going to list three memorable confession scenes from the different anime I’ve seen. I’ve come up with a way to protect the reader from spoilers.

You may then share what you remember love for.

You won’t be able to see the slideshows if you’re reading this via a feed reader. You’ll have to go to the blog site.

Bakemonogatari

Macross Frontier (TV)

Overman King Gainer

All that goodness deserves an encore of one of the best OPs in anime ever.

CONFESSION OVER.

Your turn, what do you think are the most memorable confession scenes?

I need to watch more anime with “the gooey, mushy stuff”, so to speak. A man can shed tears, he is not just a robot, he needs more than friendship and blazing courage (dah dah dah!). Off the top of my head:

1. Urusei Yatsura The Final Chapter. After 250 something episodes and a handful of OVAs and films, here we are. Ataru has to cut the Sitcom crap and just tell Lum he loves her. If he doesn’t, she’ll leave him and erase every single moment they’ve shared. Not just in his mind, but their friends too. And the horny schmuck still can’t bring himself to say it.

He drops her horns. The big softy kept them as a keepsake the whole time. Big, dramatic Hollywood moment ensues, and being Ataru, he STILL can’t say “I love you”. The closest he can get is “AS IF I COULD FORGET YOU!!! (ya crazy alien broad…)” Being a Rumiko Takahashi show, this is the closest we get to closure, but it’s sweet. A hell of a lot better than what Ranma and Inuyasha gave us. Lum will stay with her darling until he says those words, he huffs that he’ll only say that on his deathbed.

2. Mobile Fighter G Gundam. You knew this was coming. After 49 episodes of tepid, mostly domestic abuse back and forth, Domon has to tell Rain he loves her. If he can’t say it, the universe is doomed. Given that Domon is a sociopathic, socially retarded martial artist raised in the wilderness; this is much harder than it sounds. After two minutes of rambling like an idiot, he chokes it out, and Love is hurricane. Princess rescued, evil demon slain, Burger King of Hearts abides, see you Gundam Fight 13. This is one of the closest times Gundam has come to showing a remotely compelling romance, and that fact saddens me no end.

3. King of the Braves: GaoGaiGar. This one always gets me. Last episode, GGG is spent, the Brave Squad is dead, Mamoru is dead, Mikoto has been forcibly converted into an all consuming nanotech monster. Gai is beaten. The King of the Braves walks forward slowly to the women he loves, and he tells her he loves her, one final time. He wouldn’t change his life for anything, not even functional genitalia (what with the cyborg thing and all). And despite the fact that their screen relationship has consisted of nothing but Mikoto approving him using stock footage, it’s oddly moving. Bizarrely moving for a show that’s 75% stock footage and designed to sell crappy toys.

Eureka Seven of course, but I can’t recall a specific moment where Renton just flat out told her he loved her, or vice versa. Same goes for Holland and Talho. Macross: DYRL?, Hikaru flat out telling Misa he wants her. End of love triangle, now we feel bad for awesome DYRL? Minmay. Also, I haven’t seen the series yet (to my eternal shame), but does this clip from LotGH count as a confession?

I’m with you, man. G Gundam is proof of what good, honest, abiding love between a man and a woman can do. It gives them the power to punch heart-shaped holes through evil. That kind of love is worth chasing after.

And while I’m at it, Casca and Guts’ confession in Berserk. I’ve only ever read the manga version, but it never fails to reduce me to a blubbering wreck (in part because I know what’s coming round the corner). Just the beautiful way Casca breaks down and pours out her entire heart to this clueless sellsword… everything they’ve been through together, all the pain and sacrifice, and Griffith. Hate and love keenly intertwined.

And then they fuck like rabbits, which went pretty well till Guts remebered how he was raped as a five year old. His reaction? Symbolicly trying to murder his weak inner child self via Casca as a proxy/exploring his choking fetish but forgetting the safeword. Ahh Berserk… only you would follow up a heartfelt decleration of love with the main character admitteding to patricide and almost killing his girlfriend.

I would say the good in this series outweighs the all consuming despair in engenders in the reader. Has a lot of stuff in there that will resonate with your inner metal fan. Giant ass swords, kinky demons, ENORMOUS lashings of gore, freaky ass monsters, the character of Guts in general…

As long as you can stomach all the rape (which is far too plentiful, but never played for titillation), and don’t mind getting so invested in this franchise only to be outraged by how long it takes to update STOP PLAYING FUCKING IDOLMASTER MIURA YOU SWEATY PERV AND JUST DRAW THE DAMN THING.

Just try it man. Odds are you won’t regret it. I cannot recommend this show highly enough.

If anyone out there enjoyed the volume long rape of Casca, I will readily beat them to death with a rusty chain. It’s one of the most horrifying, traumatic things I’ve ever witnessed, ficitonal or otherwise. If some sick prick out there acually got off on it… I don’t want to think about it.

THAT SAID, Berserk is more than worthy of your time. I suggest you go with the manga, the anime version is rather dated now and the recent CGI movies are cutting a load of material. It starts off a little rough until the end of Volume 3 where The Golden Age arc kicks in, and it gets fucking incredible.

I never got into Urusei Yatsura, precisely because of the immensity of the sitcom stuff that I don’t want to have to deal with.

Fucking G Gundam, that’s not a confession, that’s a final boss level power up. But yeah, that means it’s AWESOME!

LOL GGG.

Dominic x Anemone is proper confession… no, more than that. It’s a fucking all time mother of all confessions to end the universe with love kind of moments. It’s just so much more than a confession that I didn’t even consider it for this post.

Yang’s confession is inept, but lovable in its goofy way. It’s more than just a confession, it’s a marriage proposal and it’s lovely. I’m not a Frederica fan though. I’m still hung up on Jessica Edwards.

Even if you have no interest in sitcom stuff Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer is absolutley MUST see. One of the greatest anime films in history and definetly Oshii’s first superb work and “real” start of his career.

You might want to watch the first UY film (Beautiful Dreamer is second) beforehand despite everything to get a impression on just how different BD is from the Urusei Yatsura “norm” and how it was the start of Oshii’s auteur period

Who can ever forget Cardcaptor Sakura? It took almost 1/3 the whole series made out of Li-kun’s tsundere doki-doki moments before he could muster the courage. Just when you thought he could say it, all kinds of confession-blocking mechanisms where thrown out to him every time. Sakura-chan’s reply-confession was equally bad, took the entirety of Movie 2. And should I say, both their confessions were “after” a battle! In hindsight that sounds so lame, but because we had such so much buildup, it just had to be my confession-of-all-time in anime.

If I think about it, yeah, those were my all time favourites + the manga. The reason I never cared much for TRC Sakura and Syaoran was because of how lame they felt after all the rooting I did for them to get together in CCS. I still remember how excited I was as a little girl when Yukito and Meling were finaly out of the picture. I think I would have thrown a fangirl tantrum had CLAMP avoided the ending.

No surprises in that I have DYRL as having my favourite confession scene. For the most part of the film (and almost the entire series), Hikaru Ichijo is an inarticulate dunce, but when he confesses to Misa, it’s direct and cannot be misinterpreted in any way. And Oboetimasuka in the background. Just great and Triangle over.

1. Macross Frontier: Michel’s confession to Klan, it reminded the viewers that we shouldn’t wait to confess our love.
2. G Gundam: Domon’s confession to Rain, I liked this confession because it showed domon hesitating, and of course, admitting that he can’t do anything properly except fighting.
There wasn’t any clear confession in Aquarion but I liked the last words of Apollo
“Lets meet again, in 12000 years”

I know of another, how could I forget this man… Max finds Milia who is trying to kill him, and instead of creeping out, he fights back in an epic knife battle, where he wins, and just when he has her on the floor ready to die after losing a battle; marry me.

********************
Interestingly enough after some thought I came to realize I really can’t think of a confession with true impact on me if we exclude Ranka’s confession in Sayonara. Great and very meaningful moment for me for many different reasons… it was also aesthetically superb and ended with one of the most evocative, most beautifully and meaningfully framed shots from the whole Macross franchise. To have something meaningful to write I might as well say why I love it:

The whole sequence (storyboarded by Kawamori himself) is utterly perfect and this frame can only be fully appreciated in context of shots building up towards to it and what follows, all so sublimely set to the ringing opening chords of the great Houkago Overflow. The sound dimension in form of effects and music is very important to its impact but just to describe this one visual frame here:

It’s (seemingly) simple in composition but beautiful long shot with the main subject (Alto hugging Ranka) caught in the dead centre. The feel of this action, moment getting “caught” in time is furthened by the way the framing emphasizes both floor and roof (latter of which is rarely seen in films generally) as constricting shapes. There’s really no empty space up or above them and if one looks carefully they’re also positioned on a line on middle of floor that runs right through the floor and frame, further enclosing them on very specific spot that is at the dead center in all possible ways.

Around this main attraction for the eye the main elements in picture are the windows that in their own way thematic way signify the “end of Triangle” that really happens right now (Ranka realizes it for sure and windows foretell the conclusion for viewer that follows some 15-20 odd minutes later on in verbal form). Earlier in scene from similar camera direction but with much closer framing the 3 immediate windows behind characters look just like three triangles like this: ▲▼▲ (the left and right windows, that are not actually triangular in shape, are only partially framed to give this impression of triangle form). Now only the middle ▼ remains and it’s no accident it’s the one framed upside down. The triangular relationship does get negated when it gets resolved after all (it’s also worth noting that in previous shot explicitly featuring triangle form, the rooftop scene, Ranka is the one framed as the “down” spot, away from the other two) – which is what fundamentally happens here through the way Alto behaves.

The windows close and also swallow the triangle shape into darkness – the last time we see the shape in the film at all. Ranka’s (romance arc) end is here.

It’s not only through the window that end of triangular affair and Ranka’s separation from Alto are signaled. The second, even more explicit way the frame signals their diverging ways is on the floor.

Geometrically balanced arrows pointing to different directions have been placed on the floor on both sides of the two – coloured in red and blue respectively no less. You couldn’t really spell visually more clearly “they shall go separate ways” if you tried! So in a sense this moment right here literally was “Ranka end”.

One of the strongest, most evocative shots from the entire franchise

It’s stuff like this (on top of the actual content of the scene) that made it one of my favourite scenes in the film and the only “confession” scene from anime I’d personally describe as “immaculate”.

(ps. if you could I’d appreciate high quality 1080p screencap of the picture without text! I don’t have access to film right now and I’d need the pic… ^^’)

*******

Apart from that the one confession scene that burns quite brightly in my mind (but doesn’t quite reach “immaculate” level) there’s Hikaru’s confession to Minmay in ep 27. That was very memorable and impressive moment for me – which is one of the reasons why the artificial dragging on of the main love triangle in post-war part always has slightly bugged me. It really nulls one of Hikaru’s greatest moments in my eyes…

I just really can’t think of other “confession scenes” that had impact large enough to merit description like “immaculate”. At their best they’re well written, crucial part of the storyline (but nothing more), normally bearable but way too often grating for me.

I’m not familiar with third anime but Bakemonogatari confession just happened, had no emotional resonance or things of interest beyond “lol Senjougihara” for me. it just happened – and as such it was of little interest and had no emotional investment in it. yay subversion isn’t enough to make it stand out from Bake. Developments in their relationship that came in later eps were far stronger in my mind.

MacrossF ep 20 working as well as it did stood as a proof of quality of its execution – it managed to have huge impact DESPITE the tragic love confession format bullshit, not because of it.

I did like the scene between Sheryl and Alto great deal in ep 24 though: too bad I can’t count it because Alto the tool failed at confessing 😛

I guess Kimi ni Todoke’s confession finally happening got a huge YEESSSSSS out of me but that didn’t make the writing very good or scene itself very interesting: I was just glad all the stupid, aggravating bullshit that defined Rage ni Todoke was finally over.

so yeah, I’m really hard pressed for confession scenes I don’t at best find bearable.

I gotta say, the anime confession that immediately comes to mind is the one from Daddy Long Legs. If you ignore Judy’s annoying pigtails, the scene is absolutely beautiful and moving. Yes, it’s a 90s anime, but it still manages to bring out a surge of emotion from me. Also, it’s one of the few anime adaptions of Western literary works that succeed.

For me, it was the Toradora’s Kitamura’s confession during the election for student council president, in front of the all students. That was really memorable and bold. No one can do that kind of love confession.
And most recently, Highschool DxD’s 1st episode. Suddenly out of nowhere, a pretty girl at the overpass confesses love to you! From loser to winner!

After watching episode 17 of Overman King Gainer I remembered this post and I just had to come out and say that it contains what is indeed the most deliciously over the top confession scene in anime. Funny as hell too.